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Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

Decent Essays

Nineteen Eighty-Four opens in Airstrip One, a region in Oceania, one of the world’s major super-powers. The novel follows Winston Smith, a member of the middle class Outer Party, and his battle against Oceania’s totalitarian government. Orwell manipulates the standard story arch of an archetypal hero to maintian that the loss of individual thought leads to a loss of one’s humanity. Orwell begins by using “all of” the standard phases of the Joseph Campbell’s hero cycle. Winston Smith is presented as a typical, lowly Outer Party member whose job is to change the Party’s records to reflect the current political affliations and events. The first stage commences when Winston is writing in his journal and contemplates the existence of Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford, three men who were accused of exposing vital military information. He suddenly remembers that he was once given “a photograph of the delegates at some Party function…in the middle of the group were Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford” (71) which showed that the men were high-ranking Party members, but disposed of the photo out of fear of being arrested by the Party. These revelations and feelings of distrust towards the Party demonstrate Winston’s ability to think freely as an individual, unlike the majority of his co-workers. The next day, while at work, Winston runs into a woman who hands him a slip of paper that says, “I love you” (100). He knows that intimate relationship are a gross violation of the Party’s laws,

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